Exodus (BobMarley.com 2007)

Exodus: Bob Marley and The Wailers (2007)

'Exodus' book focuses on Bob's 1977 exile

By Dream Hampton

It is impossible to talk about Bob Marley's monumental album Exodus without an account of his own flight from Jamaica after the assassination attempt made on his life at 56 Hope Road on the night of December 3, 1976. Exodus: Bob Marley and The Wailers, Exile 1977 is a collection of rare photos and probing essays that contextualize Bob's time in exile, the two classic albums he produced in London, Exodus andKaya and the politically charged times that left Bob in need of recuperation.
Contributor Lloyd Bradley, whose running essay "The Story of Exodus," serves as the book's thread, provides the story of the post-colonial, post-Independence period in Jamaica's history. Britain made its official exit in 1962, but not before essentially locking down the tourism, banana and bauxite industries. Within a decade, poverty enveloped the island; the murder rate per capita was triple that of New York and Kingston became so lawless that drivers were instructed to disobey traffic lights lest they get caught in the crossfire of midday gunplay. Bradley argues that Bob and the Rasta community essentially won Manley the 1972 election, believing his campaign promises to legalize marijuana and to assist in repatriation to Ethiopia. But by the 1976 election, those promises remained unfulfilled and so "Bob and other Rastas stayed away from the politricks of Babylon."

Still, Bob hoped to offer a reprieve to Kingston's masses, held hostage by the often politically motivated violence, with his "Smile Jamaica" concert. He ignored warnings via anonymous phone calls to his home to cancel his performance and even after he was shot, performed two nights later with a bullet lodged in his left arm. After the show Bob, the Wailers and his entourage chartered a late night flight to the Bahamas. Two weeks later they were in London.

Poet Kwesi Linton, whose essay "The Poetry of Exile" takes on Exodus' lyrical import and finds the assassination attempt essential to reading even the more spiritual songs on the album. "'Natural Mystic,' 'Three Little Birds' and 'One Love' only become significant in the light of the assassination attempt," he writes. "It is in Marley's Rastafarian faith, and his implacable belief in a 'natural mystic' that we locate the thematic thread, as we are taken through songs about faith, betrayal, persecution, defiance, resistance, recuperation, love and hope."

In the introduction to the book, Chris Blackwell argues that while Bob directly addressed the shooting on "Guiltiness" and "So Much Things to Say," Exodus as a whole contained "fewer political songs and a greater proportion of love songs [because] things were good." Though the accolades for Exodus would come much later (music critic Robert Christgau points out that Kaya charted better in the U.S.) the album that Time magazine named "Album of the Century" at millennium's end was recorded at what Blackwell calls a time of "confidence." Far from being derailed from his musical mission after the attempt on his life, the recording of Exodus was more than productive, it was a regenerative time, one where he was able to re-commit, relax and revitalize.

Longtime collaborator Vivien Goldman, who also authored a definitive book about the making of Exodus, remembers Bob's unique working style, one that saw him drifting between the collaborative jam sessions that his creativity required and the deep solitude in which he was able to retreat despite a crowded studio, where, she says, one could find him "locked in his own concentration."

Football (or soccer), Bob's other great passion, is duly documented by inside photographer Dennis Morris. Editor Richard Williams penned "The Football Match" about the many games Bob played as seriously as he would an arena concert. It was in London during one such match that Bob injured his toe and as girlfriend Cindy Breakspeare remembered, failed to "give it a chance to heal." It was also in London, after four concerts that marked the end of the European tour in support of Exodus that Bob was diagnosed with melanoma, a cancer that would eventually claim his life. Exodus, Exile 1977 captures a year that would not only forever alter Bob's life but the entire global musical landscape for decades to come.